They Don't Cut The Grass Anymore

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All Rise...

The Charge

"It's been six years since I made my first movie with my high school
friends. Maybe they want to make another one. I bought a better camera, and have
plenty of liver and ground beef from the grocery store, so after work they
probably could—okay, mom, I'll take out the garbage!"

The Case

Plot: Two hillbillies, making a living landscaping in suburbia, start killing
people. The end.

Here we have another entry from Nathan Schiff, the filmmaker from Long
Island specializing in zilch-budget gore. For those of you had just endured my
review of Weasels Rip My Flesh, let
me just end the suspense: They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore ain't much of
an improvement. If you're holding hope that this film, being made six years
later, would benefit from a more professional treatment, you're wrong.

So for the benefit of this review, I'm going to create a microcosm where the
only films that exist in the world are these two Schiff productions
(coincidentally, inhabitants of this microcosm live in a constant state of
despair and misery).

They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore is far more "gorier" than
its predecessor. However, even the term "gore" is nebulous. What's
on-screen is gross and slimy and squishy and red, sure, but I am still reluctant
(as we slip out of our faux-existence for a second) to qualify it as gore in
comparison to other movies.

First, everything on display here is so low-budget and homemade that any
sense of reality is immediately discarded. There's a scene where a girl has a
firecracker rammed in her mouth, then it's cut to a crude, cardboard
head—I'm talking worthless here—and BOOM. But big deal; the
effects were so crummy the idea of an actual girl's head exploding is distant,
and overrun by the absolute stupidity of the effect.

And then the lingering blood and guts shots—which Schiff opts for in
lieu of plot progression or any coherent storyline—are simply a pair of
hands rooting through raw meat and goop. It's certainly disgusting, but in the
way watching a meat-cutter hack apart a piece of liver is disgusting. It's gross
because goopy meat and slime is gross, not because we think an actual person is
getting mutilated. Forget suspension of disbelief; from the opening sequence of
some London broil being yanked off a plastic skull, the audience is so far out
of the movie they may as well be in Madagascar.

Back to our forged microcosm. Compared to Weasels Rip My Flesh,
They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore makes more sense visually. I was able to
actually see what was going on, and the gore, while super-fake, was up-front and
visible…perhaps too up-front and visible. Plus, Schiff chose a slightly
better film stock to use and his hand doesn't shake as much holding the camera
anymore.

As far as the narrative, however, They Don't Cut the Grass Anymore
makes Weasels Rip My Flesh look like The Godfather Part 2.
Obviously, Schiff and his cronies were just looking for an excuse to gore it up.
Which wouldn't be so bad if the movie wasn't made with the loose change found
underneath Schiff's sofa cushions. And at 70 minutes, They Don't Cut the
Grass Anymore is Schiff's towering epic, clocking in at six minutes
longer than "Weasels."

Image has crammed this disc with so much Schiff stuff you won't be able to
breathe (or care). Schiff is interviewed again and, again, it's obvious he takes
himself a little too seriously. His commentary is still not as self-deprecating
as it should be, though he does reveal some interesting tidbits: his star, the
legendary John Smihula, contributed to the five-day shooting timetable because
he was heading off to the Peace Corps, and they kept a nonsensical subplot in
the final cut simply to increase the runtime. For those craving more of Schiff's
work, the disc includes some more film shorts, which stop just "short"
of being remotely interesting.

Look, the guy has gusto, but please, Mr. Schiff, stop foisting your home
movies on us, and find a budget. I'd anticipate what you could do with more
money than what's currently in my wallet.